Angela Merkel – Page 2

Former US Intel officials urge Merkel to reject politicized intelligence

A group of former U.S. Intelligence officials including William Binny, the first whistleblower to report on the NSA’s mass surveillance, has sent an open letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, warning her of the risks of Ukrainian NATO membership and of the dangers of faulty intelligence resulting in an escalation of the conflict, as published on the website Antiwar.org

Addressing Mrs. Merkel, the letter states that “accusations of a major Russian ‘invasion’ of Ukraine appear not to be supported by reliable intelligence…[and] the ‘intelligence’ seems to be of the same dubious, politically ‘fixed’ kind used 12 years ago to ‘justify’ the U.S.-led attack on Iraq.” It also notes that last year, “hawkish State Department officials and their friends in the media very nearly got Mr. Obama to launch a major attack on Syria based, once again, on ‘intelligence’ that was dubious, at best.”

This statement, released by the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), has been published ahead of the NATO Summit to take place September 4-5. The most prominent member of the group, William Binney, is a former high ranking NSA official and the first whistleblower to come out and speak out against the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program.

He and the group use the letter to draw comparisons between the lead up to the 2003 Iraq war and the current escalation happening right now in Ukraine. The main point that they make is that the intelligence being used now to justify NATO intervention into Ukraine is unsubstantiated and politicized. They say based on their “considerable experience collecting, analyzing, and reporting on all kinds of satellite and other imagery [and] other kinds of intelligence” that the evidence being used to charge Russia with invading Ukraine has “a very flimsy basis.” They further note that the evidence is reminiscent of that presented by Colin Powell at the UN in February 2003 ahead of the Iraq War, which turned out to be false. They add further that twelve years ago, then Chancellor Gerhard

Schroeder refused to join the attack on Iraq because of the lack of solid evidence.

In the several months since the conflict in Ukraine started, there have been many reports about both sides which have turned out to be false. In their letter, the group points to cases of dissonance between President Barack Obama’s words and their own officials’ rhetoric. The Western media and many leaders have recently jumped on Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s claim of a Russian invasion into Ukraine.

Poroshenko even cancelled a foreign trip to stay and address the situation. Since then, many media outlets reported a massive invasion by the Russians, both with troops and armored vehicles. Obama on the other hand, has instead said that what is going on in Ukraine is “a continuation of what’s been taking place for months now…it’s not really a shift.”

Noting this dissonance, the group urges Mrs. Merkel and other European leaders to use “judicious skepticism” in their discussions of the crisis.

They also urge Chancellor Merkel and her colleagues to push for a “concerted effort [toward] a ceasefire,” which they believe Kiev has been responsible for delaying. The letter urges the Chancellor to tell the Ukrainian government “’flat-out’ that membership in NATO is not in the cards –and that NATO has no intention of waging a proxy war with Russia.”

The summit has been planned to take place on 4-5 September in Cardiff, Wales.

Following Crimea’s reunification with Russia in March 2014, NATO has been boosting its military presence close to Russia’s border. In particular, the bloc dispatched a number of warships to the Black Sea, and reinforced air patrolling missions in the airspace of the Baltic states.

In April, Washington sent four airborne units to Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia to support its NATO allies amid the fighting in eastern Ukraine.

NATO plans to establish five additional military bases in Eastern Europe, the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported on Saturday.

Russia has repeatedly expressed concern over NATO’s increasing military presence in its neighboring states.

Source: Ria Novosti

Putin, Merkel urge de-escalation in Ukraine

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have emphasized the importance of international efforts of the contact group on Ukraine, which is expected to resume its work in the soonest time.

The Kremlin press service reported this on Wednesday.

In a telephone conversation, the Russian president notified Merkel “about the intention of the Russian side to provide further supplies of humanitarian aid to the population of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions”. The two leaders also spoke for the soonest possible termination of bloodshed and rectification of humanitarian situation in Ukraine’s southeast, as well as for the need to take the path of political settlement of the conflict.

During the conversation initiated by the German side, Putin informed the German chancellor “about the main results of the meeting between leaders of the Customs Union’s member states with the Ukrainian president and representatives of the European Union in Minsk, at which they exchanged views on issues related to the consequences of Ukraine’s signing of the association agreement with the EU”.

The Kremlin press service reported that “Merkel backed the reached agreement about holding intensive talks on the matter between experts from Russia, Ukraine and the European Commission”. “In addition, the relevance of contacts in the issue of natural gas transit to Europe through Ukraine has been noted,” the statement says.

The two leaders have agreed to continue exchanging opinions on the whole complex of discussed issues on a regular basis.

Rheinmetall seals deal with Algeria

Germany’s Economy Ministry has approved plans by defence group Rheinmetall to deliver an armoured vehicle assembly plant to Algeria, according to a reply sent by the ministry following a request from a member of parliament.

Rheinmetall’s delivery to Algeria includes a production line to assemble the Fuchs armoured vehicle, as well as other parts valued at more than 28 million euros ($37 million), according to the document. German magazine Der Spiegel had earlier reported on the approval, according to Reuters.

The planned factory, located about 400 km east of Algeria’s capital Algiers, is to build nearly 1,000 armoured vehicles, Der Spiegel said, adding parts would be exported to the country, where workers would assemble them. It was earlier reported that 980 Fuchs 2 vehicles will be built as part of a 2.7 billion euro deal. Apparently Algeria has agreed not to sell the vehicles to other countries.

The deal is the result of a visit to Algeria by German Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2008 and was largely approved by the previous government, Der Spiegel said.

Algeria has ordered around ten billion euros worth of military equipment from Germany in the last few years, including two Meko A200 frigates from Thyssen-Drupp and SUVs and trucks from Daimler. Last year Algeria purchased 825 million euros worth of tank parts, SUVs and trucks from Germany.

In 2011 Germany authorised the export of 54 Fuchs vehicles worth 195 million euros to Algeria, as well as other military vehicles worth 286 million euros, according to Der Spiegel.

Algeria is greatly expanding its military and just this year ordered two Kilo class diesel electric submarines from Russia, and in 2015 the Algerian Navy will take delivery of the landing and logistic support ship Kalaat Beni-Abbes. 42 Mi-28N Night Hunter attack helicopters and six Mi-26T2 cargo helicopters were ordered this year in a nearly $3 billion deal from Russia. Also this year it emerged that Algeria’s military has acquired self-propelled artillery from China.

Earlier this year, Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel said he would tighten rules on arms exports, curbing sales to states such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia, whose purchases had previously helped make Germany the world’s third largest arms exporter, Reuters reported.

Germany earlier this month permanently halted Rheinmetall’s planned export of combat simulation equipment to Russia, going beyond recently imposed European Union sanctions which block future defence contracts.

As a result, Rheinmetall cut its 2014 operating profit aim, and now expects group earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) of between 200 million euros and 220 million euros, down from a previous target range of 230 million to 250 million.

Source: defenceweb.co.za

US, EU have yet to answer questions on how MH17 led to sanctions

Russia released military monitoring data in late July, which shows Kiev military jets tracking the MH17 plane shortly before the crash – and posed yet another set of questions to Ukraine and the US over the circumstances of the tragedy.

The plane crash has led to a series of sanctions against Russia from the US and the EU, but disconcerting details of how the the accident occured have yet to be answered.

Military officials – chief of General Staff of the Armed Forces Lt. Gen. Andrey Kartopolov and chief of the Air Force Main Staff Lt. Gen. Igor Makushev – posed a number of questions to Kiev and Washington concerning the possible causes of the catastrophe in Eastern Ukraine that killed almost 300 people.

1. Why did the MH17 plane leave the international corridor?

“Please note that the plane stayed within the corridor until it reached Donetsk but then it deviated from the route to the north,” said Kartopolov.

2. Was MH17 leaving the route a navigation mistake or was the crew following instructions by Ukrainian air traffic controllers in Dnepropetrovsk?

“The maximum deviation from the left border of the corridor was 14 km. Following that, we can see the plane maneuvering to return to the corridor, yet the Malaysian crew did not get a chance to complete the maneuver. At 17.20, the plane began to lose speed, and at 17.23 it disappeared from Russian radars.”

3. Why was a large group of air defense systems deployed to the militia-held area if the self-defense forces have no planes?

“As far as we know, the Ukrainian military had three or four air defense battalions equipped with Buk-M1 SAM systems deployed in the vicinity of Donetsk on the day of the crash. This system is capable of hitting targets within the range of 35 km at the altitude of up to 22 km.”

4. Why did Kiev deploy BUK missile systems on the edge of militia-controlled zones directly before the tragedy?

“We have satellite photos of the places where Ukraine had its air defense units deployed in the southeastern parts of the country. The first three photos were made on July 14. The first photo shows Buk launchers 8 km northwest of Lugansk. You can clearly see a TELAR and two TELs. The second photo shows radars 5 km north of Donetsk. You can see two TARs along with other equipment and technical structures. The third photo shows air defense systems north of Donetsk. You can clearly see a TELAR launcher and about 60 military and auxiliary vehicles, tents for vehicles and other structures.

“Here’s a photo of the same area made on July 17. Please note that the launcher has disappeared. The fifth photo shows a battery of Buk missiles at the village of Zaroshchenskoye 50 km east of Donetsk and 8 km south of Shakhtyorsk on the morning of the same day. The sixth photo shows the same area on July 18. As you can see, the battery has left.”

No Buk missile defense units in Donetsk Region, 5km north of Donetsk city, on July 17, 2014.

5. On the day of the crash Kiev intensified Kupol-M1 9S18 radar activity, key BUK system components. Why?

“Also, July 17 saw increased activity on the part of Ukraine’s Kupol-M1 9S18 radars, which are part of the Buk system. Here on this chart you see that there were seven radars operating on July 15, eight radars operating on July 16, and nine radars operating on July 17 in the area. Then, starting with July 18, the intensity of radar activities radically decreased, and now there are no more than two or three radars operating a day. The reason behind this is yet to be found.”

6. What was a military plane doing on the route intended for civilian flights?

“There were three civilian planes in the area performing their regular flights at this time. There was a flight from Copenhagen to Singapore at 17:17, there was a flight from Paris to Taipei at 17:24, and then there was the flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.”

“Also, Russian monitoring systems registered that there was a Ukrainian Air Force jet, probably Su-25, climbing and approaching the Malaysian Boeing.”

“The Su-25 was 3-5 km away from the Malaysian plane. Su-25 is capable of climbing to the altitude of 10,000 meters for a short period of time. Its standard armament includes R60 air-to-air missiles, which are capable of locking and hitting targets from 12 km and which are guaranteed to hit the target from the distance of 5 km.”

7. Why was the military jet flying at so close to a passenger plane?

“At 17:21’35, with [the Boeing’s] velocity having dropped to 200 kilometers per hour, a new mark detecting an airborne object appears at the spot of the Boeing’s destruction. This new airborne object was continuously detected for the duration of four minutes by the radar stations Ust-Donetsk and Buturinskaya. An air traffic controller requested the characteristics of the new airborne object, but was unable to get any readings on its parameters – most likely due to the fact that the new aircraft was not equipped with a secondary surveillance radar transponder, which is a distinctive feature of military aircraft,” said Makushev.

“Detecting the new aircraft became possible as it started to ascend. Further changes in the airborne object’s coordinates suggest that it was hovering above the Boeing 777’s crash site, monitoring of the situation.

“Ukrainian officials earlier claimed that there were no Ukrainian military aircraft in the area of the crash that day. As you can see, that is not true.”

8. Where did the launcher – from the video circulated by Western media and showing a Buk system being moved allegedly from Ukraine to Russia – come from? As the video was made on the territory controlled by Kiev, where was the launcher being transported?

“I’d like to say that the information we have presented here is based on objective and reliable data from various technical systems – unlike the groundless accusations made against Russia,” said Kartopolov.

“For example, media circulated a video supposedly showing a Buk system being moved from Ukraine to Russia. This is clearly a fabrication. This video was made in the town of Krasnoarmeisk, as evidenced by the billboard you see in the background, advertising a car dealership at 34 Dnepropetrovsk Street. Krasnoarmeysk has been controlled by the Ukrainian military since May 11.”

9. Where is it right now? Why are some of the missiles missing on the launcher? When was the last time a missile was launched from it?

Screenshot from video posted on Ukraine’s Ministry of Interior account, showing a Buk system supposedly being moved from Ukraine to Russia with two out of three missiles.Screenshot from video posted on Ukraine’s Ministry of Interior account, showing a Buk system supposedly being moved from Ukraine to Russia with two out of three missiles.

10. Why haven’t US officials revealed the evidence supporting claims that the MH17 was shot down by a missile launched by the militia?

“US officials claim they have satellite photographs proving the Malaysian airliner was shot down by a missile launched by the militia. But no one has seen these photographs so far. As far as we know, there was indeed a US satellite flying over southeastern Ukraine on July 17 from 17:06 to 17:21 Moscow time.

“This satellite is part of an experimental system designed to track and monitor the launches of missiles of various ranges. If our US colleagues have imagery from this satellite, they should release it for the international community to examine it in detail. This may be a coincidence, but the US satellite flew over Ukraine at exactly the same time when the Malaysian airliner crashed.”

Buk missile defense units in Zaroschinskoe, 50km south of Donetsk city and 8km south of Shakhtyorsk, on July 17, 2014.Photo courtesy of the Russian Defense MinistryBuk missile defense units in Zaroschinskoe, 50km south of Donetsk city and 8km south of Shakhtyorsk, on July 17, 2014.Photo courtesy of the Russian Defense Ministry

This is not the first time Russia asks questions about the plane crash. No explanations have followed with Kiev insisting they have full evidence of Russia being behind the attack, but so far only releasing fake tapes.

The USA, putting the blame on the self-defense forces and Russia, has refused to release any intelligence material.

So far the US and the EU has been backing its statements and sanctions by social media and “common sense.”

Source: RT

Russia reminds UN that Ukraine agreed on Russian aid on August 12

Russia has sent a humanitarian convoy to the east of Ukraine, considering that it has received official authorization of Kiev government, Russian Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin said.

The corresponding note was received on August 12, Churkin said, noting that the humanitarian aid to Syria was delivered without the consent of the authorities of the country.

“If we are talking about respect for sovereignty, we have received a formal agreement from them [the Ukrainian authorities]. We have discussed this issue with them, and if they decided to cheat, then it’s their problem,” Churkin told Russian reporters after the closed meeting of the UN Security Council on Ukraine on Friday.

The note that gave consent for the passage of the humanitarian convoy through the Ukrainian border was received on 12 August, Churkin said.

Meanwhile both President Obama and Angela Merkel condemned Russia for an “incursion” into Ukraine.

“And the fact that they have people saying they received no orders, while firing at Luhansk, is just unfair. We cannot tolerate this and so we’ve made a statement,” the permanent representative said.

Churkin also recalled that the UN Security Council had recently created “a legal innovation,” when it had adopted a resolution on the delivery of humanitarian aid to Syria without the consent of the government in Damascus.

“There is a certain political innovation that cannot be ignored, but in this case, we believe that we have received the official consent of the Ukrainian government,” Churkin explained.

“Some members of the organization were not interested neither in the fact that civilians are being killed in the eastern Ukraine, nor in the fact that there is a humanitarian catastrophe in the region. They were worried by the fact that Russia is providing humanitarian assistance to the people who are under fire,” the Russian envoy to UN said.

“But we explained that we are in contact with the Ukrainian authorities and hope that there will be no problems with humanitarian aid and its delivery. The situation in the Security Council around this matter has then calmed down,” Churkin said.

A convoy of 280 trucks carrying food, medicine and other essentials for people in eastern Ukraine set out from near Moscow on August 12. It had been stranded at the border with Ukraine for more than a week.

The humanitarian disaster in Lugansk occurred after the Ukrainian army had blocked approaches to the city. All food supplies to Lugansk were interrupted. The local people were left without drinking water or electricity. Power supply to social facilities had to be urgently restored after artillery shelling.

Merkel, Putin in secret deal to end Ukraine tensions

Germany and Russia have been working on a secret plan to broker a peaceful solution to end international tensions over the Ukraine.

The Independent can reveal that the peace plan, being worked on by both Angela Merkel and Vladimir Putin, hinges on two main ambitions: stabilising the borders of Ukraine and providing the financially troubled country with a strong economic boost, particularly a new energy agreement ensuring security of gas supplies.

More controversially, if Ms Merkel’s deal were to be acceptable to the Russians, the international community would need to recognise Crimea’s independence and its annexation by Russia, a move that some members of the United Nations might find difficult to stomach.

Sources close to the secret negotiations claim that the first part of the stabilisation plan requires Russia to withdraw its financial and military support for the various pro-separatist groups operating in eastern Ukraine. As part of any such agreement, the region would be allowed some devolved powers.

At the same time, the Ukrainian President would agree not to apply to join Nato. In return, President Putin would not seek to block or interfere with the Ukraine’s new trade relations with the European Union under a pact signed a few weeks ago.

Second, the Ukraine would be offered a new long-term agreement with Russia’s Gazprom, the giant gas supplier, for future gas supplies and pricing. At present, there is no gas deal in place; Ukraine’s gas supplies are running low and are likely to run out before this winter, which would spell economic and social ruin for the country.

Vladimir Putin at a natural gas pipeline in Vladivostok in Russia’s far east in 2011 (Getty) Vladimir Putin at a natural gas pipeline in Vladivostok in Russia’s far east in 2011 (Getty)
As part of the deal, Russia would compensate Ukraine with a billion-dollar financial package for the loss of the rent it used to pay for stationing its fleets in the Crimea and at the port of Sevastopol on the Black Sea until Crimea voted for independence in March.

However, these attempts by Ms Merkel to act as a broker between President Putin and the Ukraine’s President, Petro Poroshenko, were put on the back-burner following the shooting down of the MH17 plane in eastern Ukraine.

But insiders who are party to the discussions said yesterday that the “German peace plan is still on the table and the only deal around. Negotiations have stalled because of the MH17 disaster but they are expected to restart once the investigation has taken place.”

Source: The Independent

Wheels reveal foreign policy choices

Joseph Stalin preferred the American Packard Twelve

The cars chosen by presidents, kings, prime ministers and other leaders of the world in the past and today, also reveal their tastes in foreign affairs.

The car fleet of the last Emperor of Russia Nicholas II in 1913 consisted of 29 vehicles and in 1917 there were 46. The Emperor’s main car was a French Delaunay-Belleville. It all ended badly for the ruler as well as the manufacturer, sadly.

When Vladimir Lenin became the leader of the Soviet Russia, strangely, he displayed a love of Western wheels, but apparently not ideology. In the 1920’s Lenin used a Rolls Royce 40/50 Silver Ghost and the only Rolls Royce-based sledge-car in the world.

Those discussions with Rolls about vast snowy landscapes with no roads for travel must have been long and interesting. Lenin famously erected the Gulags, similar to the concentration camps that the British invented in South Africa at the start of the 20th century.

Even more puzzling is that the next leader of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, preferred the American Packard Twelve. A man of slight stature, he stood very tall as one of history’s most prolific killers. But he may not have had the only responsibility.

Stalin’s grasp on the Soviet Union featured many atrocities, including purges, expulsions, forced displacements, imprisonment in labor camps, manufactured famines, torture and good old-fashioned acts of mass murder and massacres.

Actually, most of the deaths are today attributed to Lavrenti Beria, head of Stalin’s Checka, and amounted to some 20 million lives, on top of the estimated 20 million Soviet troops and civilians who perished in the Second World War, for a total tally of 40 million. It was not called the Red Terror for nothing.

Both amoral psychopaths, acting like true gangsters, Stalin and Beria eliminated anyone and everyone who was a threat to their absolute power. Beria eventually killed his instrument of power (Stalin) too, new studies have shown, by poisoning him.

Chinese leader Mao Zedong had a Russian ZIS-110 which he got as a present from Stalin in 1949, although he managed to do a fair amount of killing himself.

Other Soviet leaders stuck with domestically produced cars. Nikita Khrushchev was driven in a ZIL-111 or a ZIL-111B convertible when he visited Berlin in 1960.

Leonid Brezhnev and the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev were both driven around in a ZIL. The latter had up to 20 of those on each of his foreign visits. This required seven Il-76 transport planes.

Russia’s first president Boris Yeltsin changed to an armoured ZIL-4105 when he became president in 1991. Later he changed it to a Mercedes S500 Pullman Guard (W140).

From then on German wheels seem to have prevailed. Russia’s current President Vladimir Putin is driven in a Mercedes S600 Pullman Guard (W-221).

John F. Kennedy, US president 1961-1963, used a Lincoln Continental. At the time of the assasination in Dallas, Texas, he was in a convertible Lincoln Continental SS-100-Х.

A man of the people, Uruguay’s acting President Jose Alberto Mujica spends almost all of his income on charity and his most expensive belonging is a powder blue VW Beetle, circa 1987.

No rattling along country roads for POTUS to meet fellow Americans, though. US President Barack Obama is transported in the armoured Cadillac One, also known as The Beast. The Bama took no cues from the Batman, clearly. His motorcade counts up to 40 vehicles transported on three Boeing С-17 Globemaster military transport planes.

British Queen Elizabeth sticks to the Bentley State Limousine, created in two copies specially for her in 2002 and British Prime Minister David Cameron still uses a Jaguar XJ X351 which he damaged in a road accident.

French President Francois Hollande changed from an armoured Renault Vel Satis to a Citroen and German Chancellor Angela Merkel drives an armoured Audi A8 L Security. She also has a BMW 760 Li E67 and a Mercedes-Benz S600 Guard V221 at her disposal.

Spain’s new King Felipe has English tastes. He prefers a Rolls Royce.

Merkel orders surveillance of US and UK

Chancellor Angela Merkel has ordered her counter-espionage services to begin surveillance of British and American intelligence gathering in Germany for the first time since 1945 in response to a series of US spy scandals which have badly soured relations between Berlin and Washington.

The Süddeutsche Zeitung and two-state funded German TV channels, WDR and NDR, quoted an unnamed Berlin government source who said Ms Merkel’s Chancellery and her interior and foreign ministries had agreed to launch counter-espionage measures against Britain and the US for the first time.

“Right now we need to send a strong signal,” the Süddeutsche Zeitung quoted the source as saying. The extraordinary measures are a direct response to a series of embarrassing US and British spying scandals in Germany which began last year with revelations that the US National Security Agency had bugged Ms Merkel’s mobile phone.

The Chancellor protested on several occasions that she was “not amused” by the disclosures

The Independent subsequently revealed that like the Americans, Britain was operating a secret GCHQ listening post from the top of its Berlin embassy. A similar listening post on the roof of the US embassy in Berlin was almost certainly used to eavesdrop on Ms Merkel’s phone.

Source: The Independent

New biography shows Merkel close to communists

The pro-American publication Der Spiegel says a new biography on Angela Merkel’s life in East Germany shows she was closer to the communist apparatus and its ideology than previously thought.

Published this week and written by journalists Günther Lachmann and Ralf Georg Reuth, the book quotes Gunter Walther, a former colleague of hers at the Academy of Sciences in East Berlin, as saying she had been secretary for “Agitation and Propaganda” in the Freie Deutsche Jugend (FDJ) youth organization at the institute. Merkel, a trained physicist, worked at the academy from 1978 until 1989.

Excerpts from the book, “The First Life of Angela M.,” were published in the newsmagazine Focus on Monday. The mass-circulation Bild newspaper has also given the book prominent coverage in recent days.

The book explores Merkel’s life growing up in German Democratic Republic (GDR), where her father Horst Kasner was a Protestant pastor and a committed socialist. He moved to East Germany from West Germany in 1954.

Merkel has said in the past that her FDJ role at the academy was more that of a cultural secretary and that her duties included buying theater tickets and organizing book readings.

But former German Transport Minister Günther Krause — an eastern German politician who worked with her in the final months of the GDR and as a fellow minister in the government ex-chancellor Helmut Kohl in the early 1990s — contradicts her in the book and says she propagated Marxism-Leninism.

“With Agitation and Propaganda you’re responsible for brainwashing in the sense of Marxism,” he said. “That was her task and that wasn’t cultural work. Agitation and Propaganda, that was the group that was meant to fill people’s brains with everything you were supposed to believe in the GDR, with all the ideological tricks. And what annoys me about this woman is simply the fact that she doesn’t admit to a closeness to the system in the GDR. From a scientific standpoint she wasn’t indispensable at the Academy of Sciences. But she was useful as a pastor’s daughter in terms of Marxism-Leninism. And she’s denying that. But it’s the truth.”

On Sunday evening, Merkel said she hadn’t covered up anything about her past. “I can only rely on my memory,” she said at a public screening of her favorite movie, a popular love film made in East Germany, on Sunday night. “If something turns out to be different, I can live with that.”

Her past may have contributed to making her inscrutable. Focus quotes Werner Schulz, a member of the European Parliament for the Greens who grew up in East Germany, as saying: “Her secrecy is a legacy of the GDR, I think. At the time you had to be careful about blurting out your opinions without thinking first. (…) Even today not many people know what she’s really thinking.”

According to journalist Stefan Berg, the book hasn’t really shed any new light on the first 35 years of Merkel’s life. Instead, he writes, it has thrown a fresh veil over it — a veil of supposed conspiracy. “A disproportionate amount of mistrust runs through this book,” writes Berg, who was born in East Berlin in 1964. “While Merkel’s own declarations are eagerly called into question, intelligence reports are taken at face value and Socialist phrases are taken more seriously than they were in GDR times.”

The book makes the “perfidious” suggestion that secret powers aided Merkel’s path into politics, that she is some kind of Soviet plant, writes Berg.

Source: Der Spiegel

‘Kosovo gives Crimea right to self-determination’

The recognition of Kosovo independence set a precedent that gives Crimeans, as well as Basques and Catalans, a right for self-determination, German opposition leader said, lashing out against Angela Merkel’s support of sanctions against Russia.

Gregor Gysi, a parliamentary head of the largest lower-house opposition party in Germany has spoken out on Thursday against German Chancellor’s unquestioning support of the coup-appointed Ukrainian government.

“They formed a new government….. Immediately recognized by president Obama by the EU and German government as well. Miss Merkel! The vice-prime minister, the defense minister, minister of agriculture, environment minister, the attorney general.. They are fascists!” he stated.

Gysi said that NATO opened Pandora’s Box by recognising the unilaterally proclaimed independence of Kosovo and that Crimea’s secession from Ukraine applies the same pattern of international law.

“With Kosovo, they opened Pandora’s box. What’s allowed for Kosovo, you should also allow for others. I told you this but you haven’t listened to me. Winning the Cold War has eclipsed everything for you, you forgot about everything else,” Gysi said.

“The Basques are asking why can’t they make their choice, whether they want to stay within Spain or not? Catalonians are asking, why can’t they decide whether they want to belong to Spain or not. Of course people living in Crimea are asking the same thing.”

“I think that Crimea breaking away from Ukraine is just the same as Kosovo. I knew Putin would use this argument, and he did,” the politician said. “It must be found, such status for the Crimea, which will be acceptable for Ukraine, Russia, and us.”

Gysi also commented on NATO’s expansion to the east and called on the German government and the West to acknowledge the “legitimate security interests of Russia.”

“When we restored Germany’s unity, the US, German and other foreign ministers proclaimed there will be no NATO expansion to the east. But this promise has been broken. There was an expansion of NATO in Russia’s direction,” said Gregor Gysi in an outburst directed at Merkel.

“Security in Europe, there are neither without nor against Russia, but with Russia. When the crisis is over one day, an advantage could be that international law is finally respected again from all sides,” Gysi concluded.

Right before Gysi’s emphatic statement Chancellor Angela Merkel addressed German MPs, expressing her support of imposing sanctions and warning Russia that it risks “massive political and economic consequences” if it sticks to its position on Ukraine.

Russia has repeatedly said it considers the actions of Crimean authorities reasonable and legal, and will respect the results of the referendum.

Source: RT

China warns West against escalation in Crimea

China’s top envoy to Germany has warned the West against punishing Russia with sanctions for its intervention in Ukraine, saying such measures could lead to a dangerous chain reaction that would be difficult to control.

In an interview with Reuters days before the European Union is threatening to impose its first sanctions on Russia since the Cold War, ambassador Shi Mingde issued the strongest warning against such measures by any top Chinese official to date.

“We don’t see any point in sanctions,” Shi said. “Sanctions could lead to retaliatory action, and that would trigger a spiral with unforeseeable consequences. We don’t want this.”

The interview was conducted on Wednesday, the same day that the EU agreed a framework for sanctions that would slap travel bans and asset freezes on people and companies accused by Brussels of violating the territorial integrity of Ukraine.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, has taken the side of the putschists supported by the United States, and warned that unless Russia accepts the idea of a “contact group” to resolve the crisis diplomatically, Russia risked “massive” political and economic damage if it did not change course in the coming days.

Source: Reuters

The Failure Of German Leadership – Merkel Whores For Washington

Washington, enabled by its compliant but stupid NATO puppets, is pushing the Ukrainian situation closer to war.

German Chancellor Merkel has failed her country, Europe, and world peace. Germany is the strength of the EU and NATO. Had Merkel said “No” to sanctions on Russia, that would have been the end of the crisis that Washington is brewing, a crisis unlikely to be ended short of war.

But Merkel has signed away the sovereignty of the German nation and assigned the fate of Germany to a province in the American Empire. Thus has Merkel and the weak German leadership consigned the world to war. Already blamed for World War 1 and World War 2, now Germany will be blamed for World War 3.

Washington’s mismanaged Ukrainian coup has cost Washington Crimea, which Washington wanted most of all in order to deprive Russia of its warm water naval base on the Black Sea. In addition, the mismanaged overthrow of an elected government in Ukraine is threatening to also lose the Russian cities of eastern Ukraine. Like Crimea, eastern Ukraine consists of former Russian areas that Khrushchev stuck into Ukraine in the 1950s.

In what is clearly a fruitless and pointless effort to get Crimea back, Washington is demanding that Russia interfere in Crimea and prevent Crimea from seceding from Ukraine. If the Russian government refuses to follow Washington’s orders, Washington has announced that it will inflict “damaging sanctions” on Russia. Initially, EU countries expressed an unwillingness to go along with Washington, but with bribes and threats, Washington has conquered Merkel and has its European puppets lined up following orders.

Washington understands that economic sanctions are a far less threat to Russia than the loss of its Black Sea naval base. Washington also understands that Putin cannot possibly abandon the millions of Russians in eastern and southern Ukraine to the mercy of the anti-Russian and unelected government imposed by Washington in Kiev. As Washington knows that its threat of sanctions is empty, why did Washington make it?

The answer is in order to drive the crisis to war. Washington’s neoconservative nazis have been agitating for war with Russia for a long time. They want to remove one of the three remaining restraints (Russia, China, Iran) on Washington’s world hegemony. Washington wants to break up the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) before these countries form a separate currency bloc and avoid the use of the US dollar.

Russia will respond in kind to Washington’s sanctions. European peoples and Western banks and corporations will suffer losses. It would be at least two or three years before Washington has in place means of delivering US natural gas achieved by fracking and contamination of US water supplies to Europe to take the place of Russia’s cutoff of energy to Europe.

The Western presstitute media will dramatize the Russian response to sanctions and demonize Russia, while ignoring who started the fight, thereby helping Washington prepare Americans for war. As neither side can afford to lose the war, nuclear weapons will be used. There will be no winners.

All of this is perfectly clear, just as was the obvious conclusion of the march of events leading up to World War 1. Now, like then, the people who see the outcome are powerless to stop it. Delusion rules. Arrogance and hubris overflow. Statements and actions become ever more reckless, and then there is hell to pay.

Americans and Europeans, if they had any awareness at all, would be in the streets violently protesting the coming war toward which the insane criminals in Washington are driving the world.

Instead, the German chancellor, the French president, the British prime minister and the Western presstitute media continue to lie: It was legitimate for the West to steal Kosovo from Serbia and to steal the Ukrainian government, but it is not legitimate for the Russian population of Crimea to exercise self-determination and return to Russia. Washington and its EU puppets even have the audacity to declare falsely, after overthrowing an elected government in Ukraine and installing an unelected one, that Crimean self-determination violates the Ukrainian constitution, which no longer exists because Washington destroyed it.

The criminally insane government in Washington has pushed the Russian bear into a corner. The bear is not going to surrender.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. His latest books are, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and How America Was Lost.

Putin, Merkel want Ukraine’s territorial integrity respected

Vladimir Putin spoke with Angela Merkel by telephone on Sunday about the situation in Ukraine. According to a statement on the chancellor’s website, both leaders agreed that Ukraine’s “territorial integrity must be respected.”

President Viktor F. Yanukovych has fled the Ukrainian capital. He was removed from power by a unanimous vote in Parliament, lawmakers moved swiftly on Sunday to dismantle his government by firing top cabinet members, including the foreign minister.

The defense minister, Pavlo Lebedev told Ukraine’s Channel 24 that he intended to remain in his post.

Parliament voted to grant Oleksandr Turchynov, the Speaker, authority to carry out the duties of the president of Ukraine.

Speculation about a major role for the freed former prime minister, Yulia V. Tymoshenko, was squashed on Saturday afternoon when she issued a statement asking not to be considered for the post again.

EU officials recall her period as prime minister after Ukraine’s 2004/5 pro-democracy Orange Revolution as hardly less corrupt than Yanukovich’s tenure. Ukraine is 144th on watchdog Transparency International’s index of perceived corruption.

“Political uncertainty has arguably increased – including around the outcome of the presidential election set for 25 May – bringing with it a potential increase in the probability of a sovereign default,” Nomura political analyst Alastair Newton said.

France and Germany’s Merkel are both quite cool on the EU enlargement. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, whose country played a central role in the negotiations, is not.

The EU has found it politically difficult enough to bail out its own members during the bloc’s debt crisis. Spending on an outsider will be more fraught still.

Germany to resume counter-espionage against US, Western allies

Following decades of a heavily subdued program, Germany is planning to resume counter-espionage against both the US and other Western allies in response to ongoing revelations surrounding NSA’s global surveillance practices, Der Spiegel reports.

Another primary motivation for the resumption of surveillance is US reluctance to agree to a no-mutual-spying treaty desired by Germany, the reports suggests.

The beefed up program will include more active tracking of US agents operating within Germany’s borders. British embassies – as well as those of the US – could also be targeted, according to the report.

“This step would be an about-face from the decades-long practice of systematically monitoring the activities of countries such as China, Russia and North Korea but rarely the activities of Western partners,” read Spiegel’s assessment of the situation.

One of the revelations considered to be most serious was the fact that the US was monitoring a non-governmental cell phone used by German Chancellor Angela Merkel. According to the files leaked by Edward Snowden, the German Chancellor’s mobile phone has been on an NSA target list since 2002 and was codenamed “GE Chancellor Merkel.” Surveillance and communication equipment installed on the roofs of both the US and British embassies in the capital was also deeply criticized.

Head of the German domestic intelligence service, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), Hans-Georg Maassen suggested last November that active operations may be stepped up in the wake of the news. Germany was required to “adjust counter-espionage and take a 360-degree view,” according to Maassen.

In January, Germany called for less rhetoric and more action in the wake of President Obama’s pledge to stop spying on world leaders. While the announcement was greeted with optimism, politicians said it had been “too little, from a German point of view.”

Mere days afterwards, former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden chose the German ARD broadcaster to give his first TV interview, stating that: “There is no question that the US is engaged in economic spying.”

Clemens Binninger, part of Merkel’s Christian Democrats party, said that in regards to the discrepancies between countries surveilled, Germany needs to “cease the differentiation and treat them all the same way.”

Chancellor Merkel said on Saturday in her weekly podcast that herself and French President Francois Hollande would review plans to build up a trustworthy data protection network in Europe.

She aired her disapproval of companies such as Google and Facebook, basing their operations in countries with low levels of data protection, while in reality being active in countries with high data protection.

“Above all, we’ll talk about European providers that offer security for our citizens, so that one shouldn’t have to send emails and other information across the Atlantic. Rather, one could build up a communication network inside Europe,” she said.

In the wake of the revelations about US global spying activities, Merkel has become one of the biggest supporters of greater data protection making it mandatory for ministers to use encryption on their phones to secure their communications against intrusion.

However, before the new counter-intelligence plan comes into effect, an agreement must be reached between Merkel‘s office, the Interior Ministry and the Foreign Ministry, Der Spiegel reports. – RT